The announcement comes seven years after it was first proposed by former Labor minister Carl Scully in 2002.

Mr Campbell admits the rollout of new red light cameras had taken a long time.

"This has been a project that has been longer in coming than people would have liked," Mr Campbell told reporters on Tuesday.

"But we are in a position to roll out the first of these from December."

When pressed on why the project had taken so long, Mr Campbell, who added responsibility for roads to his transport portfolio in September, said: "I've been minister for roads for a couple of months".

Mr Campbell said the rollout would help the fight against motorists who speed and run red-lights at intersections.

"The road safety benefit of red light cameras is a reduction in the number of right-angle crashes which are also know as T-bone crashes," he said.

Opposition spokesman for roads Andrew Stoner said that despite inexplicable delay, the government would still take four years to roll out the new cameras.

"It's just typical of a state Labor government that announced back in 2002 that it was going to do the job of replacing these red light cameras with new technology," told at reporters.

"It was re-announced subsequently in 2004, 2006, 2008 and here we are Groundhog Day 2009 - the same old re-announcement.

"It's no wonder our road system in NSW is in a mess.

"This government is incompetent and embarrassing."

The RTA, which is responsible for new technology, will operate some of the new digital cameras as both red light and speed detector cameras.

They will activate combined red light and speed cameras at four permanent locations, while another five dual-use cameras will be rotated at 25 locations across NSW where a significant crash history has been identified.

The first digital camera will be operational by December 18.

The cameras will enable digital information to be transferred back to a central location and will not require regular visits by the RTA to retrieve and replace film.